2012 U.S. Elections

More than ever before, Israel and Palestine were key players in the U.S. presidential election. Mitt Romney went after Barack Obama for supposedly compromising on Israel’s security with regards to Iran, and openly dismissed Palestinian aspirations for statehood and peace. Benjamin Netanyahu’s involvement in the race, along with his disdain for President Obama, were unprecedented. +972 bloggers report from the region on the “special relationship” between the Mideast and the 2012 race for the U.S. presidency.

The president gets a second chance to challenge the status quo on the Palestinian issue. But will his personal dislike for Netanyahu translate to effective pressure on Israel? I wouldn't bet on it. 1. Israel was mentioned 34 times in the final presidential debate, and in the end, it didn't matter. The Republican strategy in the last four years – going after the White House for "throwing Israel under the bus" – did not hurt Jewish support for the president. According to exit polls, Obama got 70 percent of Jewish votes, a slight decrease from 2008, overall matching the votes…

With initial exit polls showing 70 percent of American Jews voted for Obama, all the efforts to swing the Jewish vote in favor of Mitt Romney by wealthy Republicans, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the iVoteIsrael campaign appear to have failed. Even in key swing state Florida, where Romney reportedly received 34 percent of the Jewish vote, Obama still came out on top. According to the National Jewish Democratic Council President David A. Harris: The powerful support given to the President today by American Jews shows that the more than $15 million campaign undertaken by Republicans to woo Jewish voters with negative advertising, scare…

On Election Day in the United States, Americans are choosing between two different visions for the future of their country. And some are being asked to sacrifice their rights for the sake of one of those visions. Boca Raton, FL and Los Angeles, CA - Every four years, around this time, people begin criticizing the Electoral College in the U.S., and its role in determining the next American president. The system, which sees a certain number of delegates giving their collective vote to the candidate who secures the highest percentage of votes in their respective state, results in certain states…

It's true that there isn't much difference between the two candidates on foreign policy, and it's true we could use a little less American ambition globally. But if you're letting foreign affairs discourage you from voting, you're playing that same old imperial game, and you're doing it at the expense of much more immediate and crucial issues - especially women's rights. Here's a nagging feeling I've been having all day long: I appreciate many, many people feel badly disappointed by Obama, and especially by his conduct in the Middle East. (If I had any hopes of him when he was…

A page has emerged from Haaretz's daily op-ed pages, printed before the murder but never distributed; strangely enough, the coverage of GOP-Likud relations in a piece in the page remains as relevant as ever. Yesterday was the 17th anniversary of the murder of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Rabin's right-wing assassin, a law student from Bar-Ilan University named Yigal Amir, shot him at close range following a peace rally in Tel Aviv. It was Saturday night, at 9:42 p.m. Papers print many of their pages in the afternoon and early evening, as did Haaretz that day. Naturally, when news of the…

While happy to harp on U.S. President Obama at every opportunity if he veers from their demand for unconditional support for Israel, when it comes to U.S. elections, prominent "pro-Israel" American Jews prefer him to Romney because when it comes to everything else, Obama is more in line with their liberal ideals. With the U.S. election only 3 days away, a variety of high-profile American Jewish "pro-Israel" figures who have previously lambasted President Obama decided to come out publicly in support of his candidacy for a second term. Last week, former New York Mayor Ed Koch officially backed President Obama for…

According to an iVoteIsrael exit poll, half of the 160,000 eligible U.S. voters living in Israel voted absentee, of which an overwhelming majority selected Republican candidate Mitt Romney. That reportedly includes 7,500 registered in the swing state of Florida. iVoteIsrael - the campaign that has worked hard to get American citizens living in Israel to vote absentee in next week's U.S. presidential elections (and which I have been covering here since June and exposed to be a partisan, right-wing, anti-Obama initiative) - held a press conference Thursday afternoon in Jerusalem to announce the results of what they claim is the biggest exit poll of its kind ever conducted…

About +972 Magazine

+972 is an independent, blog-based web magazine. It was launched in August 2010, resulting from a merger of a number of popular English-language blogs dealing with life and politics in Israel and Palestine.

+972 is an independent, blog-based web magazine. It was launched in August 2010, resulting from a merger of a number of popular English-language blogs dealing with life and politics in Israel and Palestine.